View formatting symbols and layout

Formatting symbols (called invisibles) like the ones shown below are added every time you press the Space bar, Tab, or Return, and when you add a column break, page break, or section break. By default, you can’t see them, but you can turn them on to see where formatting changes have been applied. You can hide them again when you don’t need to see them.

Text showing symbols for spaces, paragraph break, and section break

You can use Layout View to show the faint gray boxes that outline the different text areas of your document—including headers, footers, columns, text boxes, and the document body (the main area of text in the document). This view can help you troubleshoot layout problems.

Show or hide formatting marks

Do one of the following:

Note: You can’t add layout breaks—they appear automatically when you adjust columns for selected text.

Change the color of formatting marks

  1. Choose Pages Preferences (from the Pages menu at the top of your screen).

  2. Click General, then click the color well next to Invisibles to choose another color.

Show or hide layout markings

Do one of the following:

Invisible Character

Represents

Nonbreaking space symbol

Space

Nonbreaking space symbol

Nonbreaking space (Option–Space bar)

Tab symbol

Tab

Line break symbol

Line break (Shift-Return)

Paragraph break symbol

Paragraph break (Return)

Page break symbol

Page break

Column break symbol

Column break

Layout break symbol

Layout break

Section break symbol

Section break

Anchor point symbol

Anchor point for objects set to “Move with Text” and any text wrap option except “Inline with Text.”